hectic and flaring--double spots of flush that sat above his
cheekbones like rouge.
"But Tierra del Fuego--and this Paella--that's not the Arctic, Dex.
It's the Antarctic."
"It wasn't in 1834," Dex said, setting his glass down, careful in
spite of his distraction to put it on the coaster Henry had provided.
If Wilma found a ring on one of her end tables, his friend would
have hell to pay. "The terms subarctic, Antarctic and Antarctica
weren't invented yet. In those days there was only the north arctic
and the south arctic."
"Okay."
"Hell, I made the same kind of mistake. I couldn't figure out why
Frisco was on the itinerary as a port of call. Then I realized I was
figuring on the Panama Canal, which wasn't built for another
eighty vears or so.
"An Arctic expedition? In 1834?" Henry asked doubtfully.
"I haven't had a chance to check the records yet," Dex said, picking
up his drink again. "But I know from my history that there were
'Arctic expeditions' as early as Francis Drake. None of them made
it, that was all. They were convinced they'd find gold, silver,
jewels, lost civilizations, God knows what else. The Smithsonian
Institution outfitted an attempted exploration of the North Pole in, I
think it was 1881 or '82. They all died. A bunch of men from the
Explorers' Club in London tried for the South Pole in the 1850's.
Their ship was sunk by icebergs, but three or four of them
survived. They stayed alive by sucking dew out of their clothes and
eating the kelp that caught on their boat, until they were picked up.
They lost their teeth. And they claimed to have seen sea monsters."
"What happened, Dex?" Henry asked softly.
Stanley looked up. "We opened the crate," he said dully. "God help
us, Henry, we opened the crate."
He paused for a long time, it seemed, before beginning to speak
again.
"Paella?" the janitor asked. "What's that?"
"An island off the tip of South America," Dex said. "Never mind.
Let's get this open." He opened one of the lab drawers and began to
rummage through it, looking for something to pry with."
"Never mind that stuff," the janitor said. He looked excited himself
now. "I got a hammer and chisel in my closet upstairs. I'll get 'em.
Just hang on."
He left. The crate sat on the table's formica top, squat and mute. It
sits squat and mute, Dex thought, and shivered a little. Where had
that thought come from? Some story? The words had a cadenced
yet unpleasant sound. He dismissed them. He was good at
dismissing the extraneous. He was a scientist.
He looked around the lab just to get his eyes off the crate. Except
for Charlie's table, it was unnaturally neat and quiet--like the rest
of the university. White-tiled, subway-station walls gleamed
freshly under the overhead globes; the globes themselves seemed
to be double--caught and submerged in the polished formica
surfaces, like eerie lamps shining from deep quarry water. A huge,
old-fashioned slate blackboard dominated the wall opposite the
sinks. And cupboards, cupboards everywhere. It was easy enough--
too easy, perhaps--to see the antique, sepia-toned ghosts of all
those old zoology students, wearing their white coats with the
green cuffs, their hairs marcelled or pomaded, doing their
dissections and writing their reports...
Footfalls clattered on the stairs and Dex shivered, thinking again of
the crate sitting there--yes, squat and mute--under the stairs for so
many years, long after the men who had pushed it under there had
died and gone back to dust.
Paella, he thought, and then the janitor came back in with a
hammer and chisel.
"Let me do this for you, perfesser?" he asked, and Dex was about
to refuse when he saw the pleading, hopeful look in the man's eyes.
"Of course," he said. After all, it was this man's find.
"Prob'ly nothin in here but a bunch of rocks and plants so old
they'll turn to dust when you touch 'em. But it's funny; I'm pretty
hot for it."
Dex smiled noncommittally. He had no idea what was in the crate,
but he doubted if it was just plant and rock specimens. There was
that slightly liquid shifting sensation when they had moved it.
"Here goes," the janitor said, and began to pound the chisel under
the board with swift blows of the hammer. The board hiked up a
bit, revealing a double row of nails that reminded Dex absurdly of
teeth. The janitor levered the handle of his chisel down and the
board pulled loose, the nails shrieking out of the wood. He did the
same thing at the other end, and the board came free, clattering to
the floor. Dex set it aside, noticing that even the nails looked
different, somehow--thicker, squarer at the tip, and without that
blue-steel sheen that is the mark of a sophisticated alloying
process.
The janitor was peering into the crate through the long, narrow
strip he had uncovered. "Can't see nothin," he said. "Where'd I
leave my light?"
"Never mind," Dex said. "Go on and open it."
"Okay." He took off a second board, then a third. Six or seven had
been nailed across the top of the box. He began on the fourth,
reaching across the space he had already uncovered to place his
chisel under the board, when the crate began to whistle.
It was a sound very much like the sound a teakettle makes when it
has reached a rolling boil, Dex told Henry Northrup; no cheerful
whistle this, but something like an ugly, hysterical shriek by a
tantrumy child. And this suddenly dropped and thickened into a
low, hoarse growling sound. It was not loud, but it had a primitive,
savage sound that stood Dex Stanley's hair up on the slant. The
janitor stared around at him, his eyes widening... and then his arm
was seized. Dex did not see what grabbed it; his eyes had gone
instinctively to the man's face.
The janitor screamed, and the sound drove a stiletto of panic into
Dex's chest. The thought that came unbidden was: This is the first
time in my life that I've heard a grown man scream--what a
sheltered life I've led!
The janitor, a fairly big guy who weighed maybe two hundred
pounds, was suddenly yanked powerfully to one side. Toward the
crate. "Help me!" He screamed. "Oh help doc it's got me it's biting
me it's biting meeeee--"
Dex told himself to run forward and grab the janitor's free arm, but
his feet might as well have been bonded to the floor. The janitor
had been pulled into the crate up to his shoulder. That crazed
snarling went on and on. The crate slid backwards along the table
for a foot or so and then came firmly to rest against a bolted
instrument mount. It began to rock back and forth. The janitor
screamed and gave a tremendous lunge away from the crate.The
end of the box came up off the table and then smacked back down.
Part of his arm came out of the crate, and Dex saw to his horror
that the gray sleeve of his shirt was chewed and tattered and
soaked with blood. Smiling crescent bites were punched into what
he could see of the man's skin through the shredded flaps of cloth.
Then something that must have been incredibly strong yanked him
back down. The thing in the crate began to snarl and gobble. Every
now and then there would be a breathless whistling sound in
between.
At last Dex broke free of his paraiysis and lunged creakily forward.
He grabbed the janitor's free arm. He yanked ... with no result at
all. It was like trying to pull a man who has been handcuffed to the
bumper of a trailer truck.
The janitor screamed again--a long, ululating sound that rolled